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After finishing Bluefin’s Unicorn and Robo4Less’ Mega Zaku I just wanted to do something quick and simple for myself so I chucked all my plans for the ultimate contest winner and set out to build this little Airfix Spitfire.

This was going to be a post, but this was a pretty massive project, so I decided to make it into my usual In-Progress and Completed pages.

In mid-January I called up Steve at Bluefin and had him send over the Unicorn (again) for refurbishment. We last left the Unicorn in a case of Star Wars-like “used future” weathering in an attempt to make lemonade once the clearcoat on the Unicorn turned VERY yellow from sun exposure, and it suffered a fair amount of dings and staining in being shipped cross country. We started with this:

A few months ago i built a simple but effective spraybooth for my brothers-in-law. Partway through I started taking pictures and eventually I made a writeup but then I got busy with stuff around the house and forgot about it. I’ve got another couple how-tos in various states of completion (plus an actual model-building update) so hopefully I’ll get them all posted in the next week.

It’s another busy time as Those Gundam Guys prepare for the first annual SCGMC next weekend, November 12th in Fullerton, CA. We’ve been emailing each other back and forth and making plans. We’ve got the plan pretty much set, so go check it out:

We’re having categories for Gundam UC and Alternate Universe (each split into small- and large-scale) as well as non-Gundam mecha, anime figures and dioramas. We’ve put together an impressive raffle including a massive 1/144 Dendrobium, 4 MG kits (at current count) and a bunch of other kits.

Last night we got together to organize for the event. Clem and Dave prepared the trophies and award coins. We also tried to finish our massive group project, a six-piece diorama of several teams of GMs assaulting a Zeon remnant base circa UC 0083-4. The dio is pretty much done, but the GMs still need some work. We’ve got an orphan corner that’s been through two TGGs that have given up on it, so we divided up the kits between us to finish off. At least I got the Zaku, and not another GM… ATM I’m waaaaay GM’ed out. Here’s some not-quite-finished shots of my section:

During the week, Casval dropped by on the way home from work at Bluefin and brought me the Unicorn’s head. It was in terrible shape! It was much yellower than the rest of the Unicorn, especially the left side. Unfortunately I didn’t take a picture before I started work, but here’s how it looked after an hour or two of sanding:

Those really yellow areas… the whole head looked like that. This was much yellower that the other yellow parts on the body of the unicorn, which presented a problem because the pastels weren’t going to cover it and painting over it all would make the head whiter than the body.

My solution was to mask off all the non-white parts of the head and apply a mist coat of white from a spray can of Mr. Color Gundam Color White (or whatever it’s called). At this point it was whiter than the body, but hopefully close enough that the pastels would blend it in.

Next, I got to work with the pastels, though I never got a good after picture because near the end I was rushing to get it done so that Steve could deliver it to be carefully boxed up in a new crate for its next cross-country trip.

I fixed a couple of other issues. Casval pointed out that the leg thrusters were still their original gray, so I pulled them off (a pain in the ass given that I couldn’t get a straight shot at the screws that held them in place) and stuck them on skewers (they barely held…).

Another thing I did was to glue on one of the backpack thrusters that had stripped out and could no longer be held in place by its screw:

The thumb was broken and the beam rifle was swinging loosely in the hand, so I expoxied it securely in place:

I then wiped off the excess epoxy with alcohol. The large Gundam statues I had seen in Hong Kong had similarly damaged hands, but they had been kind of sloppily fixed, so I wanted to do better.

After the glue dried, I painted over it with Tamiya Medium Gray. Luckily it was a near-perfect match.

Back to the head, I sprayed a flat coat over the pastels on the head and then paint chipped it with Testor’s Steel. About this time it was Saturday morning around 10 AM and Steve called wondering if I could wrap things up. So I let the steel dry as much as possible and then flat –coated it again, so I could mask off the V-Fin:

It had gotten a bit scratched in the sanding process, but then when I pulled that masking tape off after painting the head, some of the paint came off, so a repaint was necessary.

As soon as it was dry I took off the tape and within 15 minutes Jose was there with the big truck to pick it up. I never got a good after picture, they’re all either backlit or in super-bright sunshine, but I did get one final shot…

In all, I put in about 9-10 hours on this project. I’m glad it came out looking a lot better, but I had a real alte night last Friday, first working on the Unicorn, then working on my own model. I’m still scrambling to finish My Dom for OrangeCon.